Library Loot

I get another big FAIL on Library Loot this week. The company I worked for decided to take advantage of the first week of the year to take a big dump on me. It’s been pretty crazy, with lots of restless nights full of stress dreams where I wake up sitting up in my bed trying to sort paperwork. And since I’m spending a very long weekend in San Francisco, starting tomorrow morning, I didn’t even go to the library today. At least CA promises to have several films that aren’t showing here. I hope to catch, at the very least, A Single Man, and Bad Lieutenant. If there’s time, then Broken Embraces and The Young Victoria as well.

As for last week’s loot, I didn’t manage to see 71 Fragments, Rebel without a Cause, or Weekend. Actually, Netflix was supposed to send me Weekend, but there’s a short wait. So they sent me Lawrence of Arabia. I didn’t watch that either. And I only watched half of The Magic Flute. Yeah, big FAIL.

As for The Magic Flute act one, I enjoyed it. This is another Bergman film that I didn’t do the research on, so I didn’t really realize that it was pretty much just the opera filmed. So far, so good. Although I am following the plot with the Wikipedia synopsis up on my BlackBerry. That way I’m sure I’m not missing major plot points, or subtleties. It’s strange hearing the opera sung in Swedish. I had only heard it in German before. Looking forward to the nonsensical propaganda of act two.

Vertigo was a certainly a solid film, but I fear I’ll never be a great admirer of Alfred Hitchcock. I’m never bored in his films, which is a feat, but I’m never wow-ed after the film is over. Hearing A.O. Scott discuss it on nytimes.com afterwards did shed some revelation on the film, and I do appreciate it, but that’s as far as I go.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, on the other hand, was beautiful, and moving, and everything I’d been told it would be. It seems the entire cast comes from my favorite french films of the last few years (A Christmas Tale, Tell No One), and they were all fantastic. It took a while getting used to the style of filming since, as I’m sure you all know, the majority of the first half is literally the point of view of a severally paralyzed man. I actually watched parts of this movie twice. Thanks for the recommendation Mad Hatter.